May was a good month for reading. One of the books I finished will surely go on my year end list of favorite books. I also re-read a classic novel and enjoyed it tremendously. This month I read three mysteries (I enjoyed all of them) and stretched myself by also reading more general fiction and one memoir.
These are the books I finished in May.
The Gospel of Orla by Eoghan Walls
Orla is a young, teenage girl in England grieving the death of her mother from cancer. Left with her father, who drinks too much, and her much younger sister Lily, Orla feels detached from the world including her school friends. She wants, more than anything, to escape and she plans to run away to her aunt's home in Ireland. She thinks she has all the logistics worked out but then she runs into (literally) a homeless man who says he is Jesus. And ... maybe he is. Eoghan Walls is a poet from Northern Ireland and this is his debut novel. While I didn't think it held together completely at the end, I did find it an engrossing read. Walls wrote in the first person as Orla, in the manner that a young, not too well educated 14 year old would write. There is punctuation missing and he uses run-on sentences. And that style works, revealing Orla's character bit by bit. There is a plot to this novel but it is mostly a novel based on Orla's character. Although the plot of the novel does include a journey across England toward Liverpool, there isn't much of a sense of place. My Quick Take is here.
Murder at World's End by Ross Montgomery
This is an historical mystery set in Cornwall in 1910 (I seem to be on a bit of a Cornwall kick, unintentionally) during a time when Halley's Comet is making an appearance. Stephen Pike has arrived at a manor house called World's End set on an island off the coast. Stephen has just been released from prison and has been recommended for the job of a second footman. When he arrives he finds the house in an uproar because the owner is convinced the tail of the comet will wipe out life unless every crack is sealed and the residents wear oxygen masks. Stephen is assigned to assist Miss Decima Stockingham, an 80 year old, irascible, foul mouthed aunt of the owner. By morning the owner is dead, apparently killed by a cross bolt in a room locked on the inside. As an ex-con all eyes are on Stephen as the murderer so he and Miss Decima must solve the crime. Yes, this is another locked room mystery but I found it more enjoyable than the last one that I read, possible because there is some humor in this mystery. And Stephen and Miss Decima make quite a team. I suspect this is the first of a series.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One day a man named Theo arrives in the small college town of Golden, Georgia. He is very mysterious, never telling anyone his last name or his whole story (except for one man in town who he hires as an advisor and from whom he rents an apartment). In the local coffee shop he notices that the walls are filled with the art of a local artist - portraits of local people who frequent the coffee shop and its surroundings. Theo begins to buy the portraits and present them to the subjects, learning about their lives. I admit that, on my own I would never have picked up this book and if I had I probably would have DNF'd it, but it was chosen by my bookclub. This is a very "southern" book, it meanders along, the characters (most of them) are nice and it almost seems beside the point to find out who Theo is and why he came to that town. In some ways, reading this novel reminded me of reading Jan Karon, whose books I like. But Karon keeps her books to a shorter length and while she introduces loads of small town characters she doesn't tell their stories in narrative as much as in action. In this book we get a lot of narrative. (A LOT of narrative.) For a while it seemed that each chapter was Theo meeting a new person and hearing their story. In some ways parts of the novel were like a series of short stories and as I was reading I kept thinking that the entire novel would have made a better short story. Frankly at about the 50% mark I was bored by it although it did pick up shortly thereafter and had a surprising ending. I know this book is popular with many readers, including some in my book club, but it really wasn't for me.
Every Good Boy Does Fine by Jeremy Denk
Jeremy Denk is a classical pianist and this is a memoir about his piano education - basically about all the piano lessons he took in his life. You might not think he or his life have much in common with Barbra Streisand but his memoir very much reminded me of hers. In each the author seemed to remember every moment of their lives and were determined to tell us about each of them. In Denk's case he seemed to remember every detail of every piano lesson he ever took. In both of their cases they remembered every compliment (and every criticism) they ever received. Thank goodness Jeremy Denk is much younger than Barbra and this memoir mostly ends (except for the Coda) at about the age of 30. I listened to this on audiobook. I like to listen to memoirs on audiobook because I often feel that the author is speaking directly to me. Occasionally this backfires if it sounds like the author is reading and not talking, but mostly it works. I sometimes feel that hearing the author on an audiobook tells me even more about the author than just the words the author wrote. But in the case of this memoir, I think I would have been better off reading the written word because I think I would have appreciated the wordplay and Denk's wry humor better. Hearing him tell his story I didn't find myself amused. At a few points in his story he said that other students thought he was insufferable and I thought - yes, you ARE insufferable. (I sought out a Terry Gross interview after finishing this and he didn't sound as insufferable when he was answering her questions as he did narrating the audiobook.) I like classical music and at one point I played the piano so I found most of this memoir interesting even though I found his telling of it annoying. But unless you are VERY interested in classical music and piano lessons, I don't recommend this. If you are interested, I recommend you read it and don't listen to it. (Although the one benefit of the audiobook was that at certain points he would actually play passages on the piano.)
The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
In the early 1970's three lighthouse keepers in a tower lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall (yet another Cornwall book) mysteriously disappear. The lighthouse is spotless and the door is locked from the inside but they are nowhere to be found. Years later, in the 1990's, a writer of seafaring adventure stories decides to figure out what happened and write a book about it. The portions of this novel that take place in the 1970's are written in the third person. The portions written in the 1990's are partly written as transcripts of the responses of the people the researcher interviews - the wives and girlfriend of the men at the lighthouse. This novel is fictional but the author points out that she had inspiration from a true story from 1900 when three lighthouse keepers disappeared from a remote rock light light in the Outer Hebrides. This novel really kept my attention and made me turn the pages. The characters are well drawn and are interesting. The descriptions of the lighthouse made me want to see a lighthouse. Recommended.
The Framed Women of Ardmore House by Brandy Schillace
At first I wasn't sure I would like this novel. The main character, Jo Jones, is an American who has inherited an estate in Yorkshire with a crumbling manor house and a cottage on the grounds where she decides to live. Then, almost immediately, she finds a dead man in the cottage and the local police are investigating the murder and her. The setup really appealed to me but in the first 50 pages I was constantly annoyed by the main character, her actions and the way she phrased things. Turns out she is neurodivergent, which explained a lot. I found this novel to be a real page turner and I liked all of the peripheral characters. I eventually liked Jo Jones. The plot is, perhaps, a little unbelievable in certain places (as these kind of stories involving crumbling manor houses often are). I do wish they had explained the main character's neurodivergence a little earlier in the story but my frustration with her at the beginning made me relate to the characters in the novel who are frustrated by her. Recommended.
John of John by Douglas Stuart
I feel fairly certain that this novel will go on my list of favorite novels of 2026. The main character, Cal McLeod, has returned to the island of Harris, off the west coast of Scotland, after failing to find a job following graduation from art school. He is to assist his conservative father with sheep farming and the weaving of "Harris Tweed" wool. Cal feels stifled partly because he feels he must keep his sexual identity as a gay man a secret from his father and the community or risk being ostracized. But his father and his grandmother have their secrets too, in fact the whole community has secrets. I was incredibly impressed by Stuart's writing. He evokes the island of Harris in all of its harshness and beauty and he creates multi-dimensional characters. And he manages to make all the strands of the story come together in a believable way by the end. My short take is here. Highly Recommended.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
This novel was the May readalong with the Blue Sky Book Club. Technically, for me it was a re-read because I read the novel a long time ago (maybe 40ish years ago). But since I remembered almost nothing about it, it was all new to me. The main character, Anne Eliott, is the daughter of a baronet and lives in a country house with her father and her elder sister Elizabeth. Austen makes clear from the start that Anne is not the favorite daughter (that would be Elizabeth). There is a third sister, Mary, who is the youngest and does not live at home during any of the important points in the novel (either being away at school or being married). Eight years earlier Anne had fallen in love with Frederick Wentworth, a naval captain with little money. Her snobbish father and sister felt he was an unworthy match. Lady Russell, a close friend of Anne's deceased mother and a kind of surrogate mother to Anne, persuaded Anne to turn down Captain Wentworth's proposal. It is clear that Anne always regretted this. Now, eight years later, the Eliotts have fallen on hard times and are forced to let their country estate and take up residence in Bath. Before joining them in Bath Anne makes an extended visit to her married, younger sister Mary, whose family lives nearby. It turns out that the couple who lease the Eliott estate are related to Captain Wentworth, who comes to visit, so he and Anne are thrown together. Much tension ensues as it isn't clear whether or not Frederick and Anne will end up together (although, c'mon, this is Jane Austen.) This is not a long book (compared to other Austen novels) and Anne is much more mature than other Austen heroines. As with many novels, if the characters would only TALK to each other they would solve a lot of problems, but then there would be no story. I enjoyed this novel very much and am very glad to have re-read it. Recommended.
A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz
This is the 6th book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery series that features the author, Anthony Horowitz, as a character in his own books. Hawthorne is a private detective, kicked out of the police service, who is a sort of grungy Sherlock Holmes type to whom Horowitz, grudgingly, plays his Dr. Watson. In this installment, the first novel in the series is being adapted into a movie and a death occurs on the filming location. Hawthorne is called on to help solve the crime and Horowitz tags along in the hope it will make another good book. Along the way Horowitz learns more about the mysterious background of Hawthorne. I like this series and recommend it but it definitely needs to be read from the beginning.
